The casualties of Turkey's war

Free speech should never mean having the right to deceive people about the plain facts and truth about history (This was genocide, but Armenians were not its only victims, Response, October 31). Thea Halo's suggestion that Armenians and other Christian people of Anatolia were "murdered" or even worse, "genocided", by the late Ottoman empire and the founders of Turkish republic, is a distortion of history. The dates referred to belong to the first world war and the Turkish liberation war (1914-23). Then we had a country invaded by several imperial and other powers, including Britain and France, with the help of their Christian brothers living in Anatolia. The Turkish nation fought to secure its freedom to found the modern republic, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

One might ask Thea Halo that if the Christians she claims were murdered during 1914-23 actually lived happily there for millennia, how come that they were not murdered when the Ottomans ruled not only Anatolia (Asia Minor), but nearly one-third of this planet between 1299 and 1918? An imperial power could only commit that sort of sin at the peak of its power, not on the brink of extinction. Just ask the Germans, Brits and the French. They will tell you.

One other question stands to be answered: did 3.5 million Muslims, including Turks in Anatolia, commit mass suicide during the years 1914-23? Who killed our forefathers, then?Zafer Arapkirli Istanbul, Turkey